The in-vehicle use of mobile, handheld network devices, e.g., mobile telephones, portable mp3 players, personal digital assistants, etc., has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, it is difficult and even dangerous to use such devices in the car. To interact and control his or her device, the user currently has little choice but to learn a new user interface (UI) system in the car, or resort to using the display and controls on the device, which are often too small and awkward for in-car use and present a serious safety hazard.
In the area of in-vehicle network computing, Ford Sync allows use of voice commands. In some cars, the user can use the car's audio controls to control the media playing of certain portable MP3 players. For example, in Ford Sync, either application programs execute directly on mobile devices or application data is transferred to the vehicle to be used by the vehicle's application programs. Therefore, the user has to learn the vehicle's native UI mechanism.
In the area of general network computing, both Sun's JINI and UPnP allow dynamic discovery of functional capabilities of various components in a given computing environment. In turn, this feature allows a new device that has not been previously known to the computing environment to use the capabilities of the other devices and make its capability available to other devices. In JINI and UPnP, the application interface and/or driver software is moved from the host network to a new device that connects to the network, and the device runs the received software in order to use the services of the host network. In both UPnP and JINI, the user should still employ the UI controls of the mobile device to use the services of vehicle components, which is inconvenient and dangerous.
As a result, there is a growing need to better support vehicle drivers and passengers to seamlessly and intuitively use networked handheld devices in the car.